Spikey!

While moving, I found an old art project that is one of my favorites from college. I've used it as a decoration in my house ever since I made it.

The class I made it for in college was Design 3-D, and the project was to take any "mundane object," and use it over and over again to make something else. I played with all kinds of ideas (clothes pins, playing cards, etc.), but the one I settled on was golf tees. Lots and lots of golf tees.

I took one big ball (just a random kickball-type ball from the kids section at Wal-Mart) and three ping pong balls and covered every inch of them with golf tees, which resulted in a pretty painful looking objects. But they're awesome at the same time.

Here's some pics :-)









Needless to say, my teacher absolutely loved this execution. You can even take the smaller ones off, and stick them wherever you want on the big one...kinda cool so you can change the shape of the sculpture depending on where you need to put it. The original sculpture way back then had one more medium-sized ball as well, but for whatever reason, the glue I used didn't stick to the material that ball was made of, so I got rid of it.

I've thought about making more...maybe with a more natural wood-colored golf tee...and then use it as a modern looking centerpiece for a table or something, but haven't gotten around to it.

I'm still here.

Well hello there, blog. I haven't forgotten about you...promise!

I know it's been a while, but I have a good excuse. I've moved from Orlando to Atlanta (finally!)...

...see?


...so I've been trying to get all settled before I get back into my art groove.

Anyway, next on the chopping block...

* finish that crazy peacock painting I started about a million years ago
* Mary and Maude painting (elephants from the Central Florida Zoo)
* and of course, work on whatever else comes to mind...which will derail my efforts to finish the two projects mentioned above, I'm sure. That's one thing I've learned over the years...you can't plan art. You can try, but it just doesn't work. At least with me.

So that's that. The only 'artsy' thing I've really done lately is a sketch of the White Rabbit (this version). Not for anything in particular...it's just a reoccurring theme in my life (which has come up again recently because of the new Alice in Wonderland movie)...and I haven't drawn anything in a while...so I figured I'd draw it and hang it up in my house somewhere since it's meaningful to me. I'll post a pic when I'm done. I'm debating on coloring it in with colored pencil, or just leaving it as a sketch...black/white kinda thing. We'll see.

Oh, and some good news that came out of my move is that our new house has 4 bedrooms...and we don't have anywhere close to 4 sets of bedroom furniture! So, that means we have a master bedroom, one guest room, an office....and I now have my very own art room! I've always wanted one of those. Mainly because I make huge messes when I work on my projects, and I have to clean up after them each time...now I can just leave it and shut the door ;-) Hopefully it'll make me more productive.

Hope to post soon with REAL updates!

Photos from The Rock Boat!

The guitar was a great success on TRB! It turned out super cool and everyone seemed to enjoy looking at it. I can't wait to hang it up on my wall. As promised to a bunch of you that read this, here is a picture!

I think a lot of the pictures of this are on my friend's cameras...since obviously I couldn't take the pics as I was talking to the people/handing them the guitar. This is just one I happened to take with my own camera. Unfortunately I didn't get all the bands to sign it, cause in order to do that I had to miss out on too many good shows. But a lot of them are on there.

Here are the guys of Green River Ordinance - they loved it and decided to rock out...even though the guitar doesn't really make much noise...lol.



I'll have to post some better photos of the finished guitar only soon...

Finishing touches...

I've been in the 'almost done' stage for about a week now, and I've only got 2 days left! In the past 5-10 days, I've worked on this thing in Orlando, Jacksonville and Atlanta...at people's houses and in various hotel rooms...but it's coming together. Pretty much everything is done, except wrapping the strings in the brown string, so they look like rope. On the new pics below, you can see one of the strings done this way...just gotta get the others done!

The only other things I have left are little teeny tiny minor things that no one will probably ever notice but me. But that's how I am with my stuff...I can't stop until I am 101% happy with it! :-)

If I have time, I may post again in the next few days with pics that are totally finished...or I may just wait until after The Rock Boat and post with pics of the autographs on it, and pics of people signing it and stuff.

Guitar Update...almost done!

I had to have my wisdom teeth removed last Thursday, which gave me lots of time to sit around in pain and be miserable...but the BRIGHT side of that is that it allowed me to use my painful and miserable time to work on this guitar! Time is running out to finish, and I'm nearly there now. My goal is to have it done in the next few days so I don't have to worry about it over Christmas. The Rock Boat is January 7, so I don't have much time to play with.


Here's where it stands at the moment:

This is the sketch of the logo on the back with marker - halfway darkened:


Here's the back now that the paper part is done...I still have to go back over all the black lines to make them dark again (the end result will look more like the left/darker side of this):


Here's the whole back:


Here's the front, with a little bit of a side angle. I haven't done the white icing or the white on the life preserver yet...those 'whites' are going to be the same tinted white as the boat is now:


Head-on shot of the front:


So close...

The Elephant Project

My friend Sarah is a zookeeper at the Central Florida Zoo. She works with the elephants there, and one of her co-workers has worked there forever. She happened to show this co-worker my artwork one day online, and they absolutely loved it. So then they asked me if I would paint their two elephants...and I said "ok!"

So meet Mary and Maude - (and me...lol) :-)



Today I went to go do a little photo shoot of them so I could have some images to work from, and I also did a few sketches. Here are a few of my favorites...soon I'll figure out which of them to use for my painting.

Quirks

So I was trying to figure out how to describe myself to someone recently (in a somewhat professional way), and instead of thinking of the normal "I'm dependable, I work well with a team, etc" answers, I kept thinking of really weird traits of mine that really had no relevance to...well, anything. So obviously those wouldn't work if I didn't want people to think I was crazy.

But then I got to thinking...these weird 'quirks' are what make me "me"...so I thought I'd post a few on here. It has nothing to do with art, which is typically what I write about on this blog...but I've never really done a post about myself on here...so consider this my fashionably late but quirky introduction. :-)

Here we go...

1. When I eat a sandwich, I typically hold it on the lower right corner. Once I eat everything up to that little teeny tiny part of the crust that I've had in my hand the whole time, I stop eating. For some reason I can't bring myself to eat that piece.

2. My fingers and toes bend backwards. Like ALL the way backwards. It's pretty gross, but it makes a really cool built-in catapult when I can find small objects to launch. French fries are great ammo.

3. I'm right handed, but I'm left footed.

4. I love chocolate, and I love ice cream, but I hate chocolate ice cream.

5. At gas stations, I usually go to pump #4 because 4 is my favorite number.

6. At work, I write with a different colored pen every week. That way I can tell when I wrote something based on which color that week was. If I can't find the right colored pen for that week when I need to take a quick note, I write the note lightly in pencil and go back over it with the appropriate color once I locate the correct pen. This week's color was purple.

7. When I'm at a sit-down restaurant, and the waitress/waiter gives me a straw that's still in the wrapper, I remove the straw and put it in my drink as usual, but then I proceed to completely shred the straw wrapper into a million pieces. and I keep tearing up those pieces smaller and smaller until the food comes.

8. I absolutely cannot stand lenticular images, or the sound they make when scratched. I honestly can't even look at something with a lenticular image on it without shivering.

9. I typically look at magazines backwards. Start on the last page, work my way to the cover.

10. I secretly kinda want a Snuggie or a Slanket. I'm always cold, so I think a blanket with arm-holes is ingenious.


That's enough for now! Hope you enjoyed...and don't give me a hard time about any of them - you know you've got some too...